


My Brother’s Son

by laniew1



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-09
Updated: 2009-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:59:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Choices are as simple as what turn to make, sometimes that choice is the wrong one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Brother’s Son

  
There is a moment, when there is a choice to be made, when the future is not known. A time when the rubber band that is time and fate snaps back and forth with no known destination, waiting for a choice to be made.

There is a moment where the future is _not_ written in stone and can thus can go any which way.

There is a moment where you can make a left turn and get away, or you can make a right turn and get caught ten miles down the road.

Sarah makes a right turn, John huddled in the seat next to her and the rubber band snaps.

  


**********************************************************

  
Derek is always annoyed by these meetings. Standing around a table talking about things they can’t change or control, machines they can’t kill.

Sarah Connor has a list of all the Terminators. Makes, models, their current human faces for those that wear them.

He doesn’t know where she gets her information. She has her sources and she doesn’t share them with anyone human.

She could be a machine herself though it’s unlikely since she’s standing in the middle of the compound and there are dogs all around and they’re not going crazy on her.

Kyle always listens intently; Allison always sits right next to one of the dogs, hand absently petting it, soothing it when Sarah’s voice rises.

There is ten minutes after the meeting where it’s just them; the Reese boys and Sarah and Allison. Sarah ignores them in favor of studying maps and Allison ignores them in favor of the dogs.

Its just like any other day, Kyle helps her pack up and Sarah ignores him while he does so. Derek tries not to feel annoyed on his brothers’ behalf, but Kyle has had a massive case of hero worship for Sarah Connor since they joined the resistance, it’s only in the last few years morphed into a crush that is fruitless.

Derek doesn’t understand it, he reminds his brother on a daily basis that Sarah is more then twice his age and could _easily_ be his mother; Kyle knows this, but Kyle also has a thing about saving people and Sarah always looks like she needs saving even when she’s kicking ass.

Kyle is the one that finds the picture buried in a bunch of files he’s straightening.

“Who’s this?” Kyle asks. He touches the face in the picture and the expression on his face is enough that Allison leaves the dogs and Derek joins them at the table.

The picture is of a boy; he’s young, maybe twelve. His face, hair, eyes, they all look vaguely familiar. Derek knows this kid, though he can’t place where he knows him from.

Sarah yanks the picture from Kyle’s hand, shoves it into a stack of files.

“It’s nobody,” she says. Derek doesn’t believe her, none of them do. Her voice is shaking and her face is white, her hands are trembling when Kyle hands her the rest of the files and she doesn’t meet any of their eyes when she leaves the room.

Derek watches her go with narrowed eyes and decides that the boy must be _someone_ , or else Sarah wouldn’t look like she’d just seen a ghost.

It’s a split second decision, and finding out who the boy is becomes his next mission.

  


**********************************************************

  
He doesn’t get a chance to investigate, Sarah calls a meeting with just the four of them the next day and she’s got a new mission and their next target.

He knows that she’s been sending people back to the past, only a few of them ever return. He doesn’t know how she even knew about the technology in the factory and he’s learned that sometimes things like that he’s just better off not knowing.

It’s a secure stronghold for now; more secure then the bunkers they’d been living in before.

She’s tacking a picture to the board.

They all know who Catherine Weaver is; Sarah’s never tried to go after her directly. Derek thinks that she’s always thought to negotiate with her. Maybe she’s realized that negotiations pretty much never work and has instead decided on taking the direct approach.

There are two questions marks on either side of Catherine’s picture. Jonathan Weaver written above one, Savannah Weaver written above the other.

“We don’t know what the kids look like,” Sarah is saying. “She’s kept them pretty much secluded and there are no known pictures of either of them, we tried to hack the DMV database, the boy at least has to have had a driver’s license but we hit wall after wall.”

Derek focuses on what she’s not saying.

“The boy is in his twenties, there’s no mention of his fathers name anywhere, we’re pretty sure he’s adopted though all records of it had been buried or lost; the girl is 8.”

The girl will be their target then. The boy will fight back, the girl will be easier to subdue.

“I’m going with you,” Sarah says.

“We’re not going to hurt her, are we?” Allison asks, she sounds alarmed. For as good as she is with a weapon she dislikes hurting people. It’s a good thing that most of their targets are metal wearing human faces.

“The hope is that we’ll be able to use the girl to get her mother to listen to reason,” Sarah says, it doesn’t answer Allison’s question but Allison settles anyway. She trusts Sarah implicitly.

She stares at each of them in turn.

Derek focuses on the space where a black question mark is the fate of an eight year old girl.

  


**********************************************************

  
Each group that has gone back uses one of four safe houses and there’s always an attempt made to try and arrive as close to possible to one of them.

Derek’s been through before, once, so he _knows_ they show up naked and as close to in shock as you can get without actually _being_ in shock. Being close to one of the safe houses means less time wandering the streets naked and confused.

There’s clothes and weapons waiting, money in the safe.

The code is the same for all four safe houses. That means that it means something, though he’s never asked what. Sarah had set it and they all use it. There’s never been any mention of changing it to something else, something more secure.

If someone cracks one, they’ll crack all of them.

They approach the Weaver house quietly.

There’s security system on top of security system, Catherine Weaver is nothing if not protective of her children it would seem.

Their intel has stated that the oldest child has his own apartment in the city, he has bodyguards around the clock. The girl lives with her mother and has bodyguards when she’s not on the property.

Derek can see her through the window, no bodyguards in sight, so at least that part of the intel is right. It takes but a second for Allison to get them in; he doesn’t question how she does it.

Probably more information from whoever Sarah gets hers from.

The girl sees them enter, sees their guns and Kyle moves forward to intercept her as the girl scuttles back. Derek sees Allison startle when she screams.

A loud, high pitched scream of terror.

The scream turns into a name and Derek knows that this is all going to go to hell pretty fucking quickly.

“John!!” she screams and their intel had said that boy was very rarely there. Except for right then it would seem.

Sarah goes to grab for the girl and she darts for the stairs. Her brother meets her on them halfway. He’s got a gun in one hand but he scoops up his sister like she’s nothing with the other.

He cradles her with one arm and the arm holding the gun is steady, he looks mean. He looks like he knows how to _use_ the gun in his hand.

Derek imagines he would look just as mean if someone had just tried to snatch Kyle.

He’s whispering something to the girl, Derek can’t hear what he’s saying but he imagines that it’s probably pretty falsehoods, ‘ _it’s okay, it’s alright, I’ve got you, I’ve got you_ ’.

They’re lies; he’s one kid with one gun. They’re four with four guns and they have a lot of training this kid probably hasn’t even thought about.

Hasn’t needed to think about because the world hasn’t ended yet.

He’s backing up the stairs one step at a time and Derek looks to Sarah for how she wants to handle it.

She’s staring at the boy like she’d stared at the photo that Kyle had unearthed. Like she’s seen a ghost.

“John?” she whispers. The boy doesn’t appear to hear her, just keeps slowly moving up the stairs. He stops at the top, gun lowering and Derek doesn’t know why until he sees Catherine Weaver come around him.

She looks pissed, infuriated. He imagines that the cops will have already been called and they should be running.

“Sarah…” he mutters under his breath. Why are they still standing here? They should be running.

“John, take Savannah and lock yourself in the control room with the guards, please,” she says, her accented voice is calm as she takes the gun from her son’s hand. She strokes a hand down his arm, down the girls back and John wraps both arms around his sister as he turns.

“Mom?” he whispers.

“Go John, I’ll take care of this,” Catherine says soothingly. He glances back at them and then walks away.

They watch them leave and then Catherine turns to them.

“Sarah Connor,” she spits and Derek’s eyes widen. He knows that Allison’s and Kyle’s faces will be mirror images of his own shock.

“That is my son,” Sarah says, her voice is numb, hollow.

Derek has never heard her sound so defeated. He hadn’t even known she had a child she was missing, though her reaction to the photograph that Kyle had found makes more sense now.

“No, that is _my_ son, you signed away all rights to _your_ son some twelve years ago,” Catherine says. She comes down the stairs and she’s holding the gun that she’d taken from John’s hand loosely in her own.

They could take her and she would never have a chance.

“Don’t even think about it Mr. Reese,” Catherine says. Her voice is calm.

Derek stops, back stiffening. She knows who they are, there’s only one reason, one way she would know who they were.

She’s not human, _definitely_ not Catherine Weaver, who would have no clue who they are since Derek is about sixteen right now. He wonders what model she is and Sarah probably knows but Sarah isn’t doing anything but glaring which is really no help at all.

“Mr. Ellison?” she queries. Her voice is soft, there is a thin smile on her lips, she hasn’t broken eye contact with Sarah once.

“They’re surrounded.” Comes a voice.

Derek swings around and there are men with guns all around them.

They’re completely fucked.

  


**********************************************************

  
They’re not separated which completely surprises him.

They’re stripped of their weapons; they’re actually stripped down to their pants and t-shirts and then they’re left alone, together, in a room.

Derek wanders it looking for some way to escape and it’s completely sealed.

Sarah is sitting in the center of the room, knees drawn up to her chest and her eyes look vacant.

Allison is sitting next to her, one arm around her shoulder and Kyle is squatting in front of her talking softly.

Derek could tell them that they’re wasting their time, but that would be wasting _his_ time.

“That really your kid?” he asks, Sarah doesn’t say anything and when he turns to look at her she’s glaring at him.

That’s good; they need her anger so they can figure a way out. Sarah, angry, can move fucking mountains and do the next to impossible.

Derek’s worked with her for a couple of years, he believes in only a half dozen things, he will never admit it out loud, but Sarah Connor is one of those things he believes in.

“His name is John,” she says, her voice is quiet, soft.

“We didn’t know you had a son,” Kyle says and the look that she shoots him Derek can’t decipher.

“It’s a long story,” Sarah says.

The door opens and Kyle comes smoothly to his feet, Derek joins him in front of Sarah and Allison.

A protective barrier even though there’s no point.

“And you’ll get to tell them all about it,” Weaver smiles thinly, she turns and guards enter the room to usher them out. Two for each of them, Derek wonders if she really considers them that much a threat.

  


**********************************************************

  
They walk down a hallway, single file; when Derek attempts to walk beside Kyle he gets the barrel of a gun in his lower back.

Weaver stops and their processional halts as well.

John is standing there, Savannah is in front of him, he has his hands on her shoulders and she’s holding a backpack in her hands. He doesn’t look at them but Derek knows the kid is hyperaware of their presence.

“I’m taking Savannah to school,” he says, he sounds angry. “What are they still doing here, shouldn’t the police have taken them away already?” he glances over at them, dismisses them just as quickly.

“I want to have a chat with them,” Weaver says.

“Mom…” he starts and Weaver walks over, gives her daughter a hug. She hugs John as well and Derek doesn’t need to look behind him to know that Sarah’s back is stiffening, her hackles rising.

“It’s completely safe, John. All under control,” she soothes.

“They tried to take Savannah,” John says, there’s frustration, anger in every word. Savannah leans back into his legs and they watch as John strokes a hand down her hair.

“But they didn’t succeed,” Weaver touches his face gently. “We need to know what they know so we can protect against it.”

He looks at them again; he’s looking over Derek’s shoulder, probably locking eyes with Sarah, he wants to see her expression but he doesn’t dare turn around. This kid knows who _she_ is at least.

His face goes cold.

The kid _definitely_ knows who Sarah is. Derek wonders what he’s so pissed off at her about. Lies the metal told him, probably.

“I’m not bringing her back here, not until we know they’re gone.”

“Give me till this afternoon, if I call you and tell you they’re still here, that I haven’t got the answers that we need, then you and Savannah can have a sibling night at your penthouse and eat pizza that I would frown at you about,” John smiles softly at that and Savannah giggles.

“The answers they may or may not have aren’t worth the risk,” John says, Sarah makes a sound behind him.

“ _Someday_ it might be,” Weaver says. He and Weaver are having a silent conversation and Savannah tips her head back to look at her brother.

“I have some errands to run anyway,” John says, he sounds defeated. He looks over at them one last time and his face is lost, he looks like a kid that doesn’t know what’s going on, but knows that the world that he’d woke up in yesterday is not the same world that he’s living in today.

 _That_ expression is familiar, and those eyes set in _that_ expression… from Kyle’s loud, indrawn breath he knows his brother sees it finally too.

Those are Kyle’s eyes, Kyle’s face. That’s the expression that was on Kyle’s face when the bombs fell.

Derek doesn’t know how, but he knows this boy is blood to Kyle. To him.

This boy is family and he’s calling metal ‘mom’.

  


**********************************************************

  
They’re seated at a table, hands cuffed to a ring in the center.

Weaver stands at the head of it looking over them. She’s metal and she’s got them right where she wants them. He wonders why they’re not dead yet.

Derek looks over at his brother and finds Kyle staring at Sarah with betrayal etched in every line of his face.

Someday Sarah is going to send Kyle to the past and use him as a sperm donor to get a son that a metal bitch will raise. He wonders if it will be an order or if it will happen by accident on some other mission.

He can’t think that anything Weaver is going to say is going to be near as important then the fact that Sarah has a son that is most likely Kyle’s.

  


**********************************************************

  
“Our future,” Sarah says, once they’re back in their brightly lit room. “It’s not the way things were supposed to be.”

She scrubs hands over her face and she looks tired, numb.

Weaver is apparently metal that is purporting to be on their side. Or at least fighting on a side that is nearer theirs then the ones that are attempting to destroy them for breathing.

Derek doesn’t buy it, but they’re locked in a room and the metal is on the other side of the door with armed guards and a kid that is part Kyle’s.

“John was supposed to be the leader of the resistance,” Sarah says. “He sent you back to protect me, to protect him even though he didn’t exist yet. Wasn’t even a glimmer of a thought.”

She’s looking at Kyle and Kyle has a scowl on his face but he’s listening.

“When he was fourteen Skynet sent another Terminator to kill John, that time John sent his own Terminator to protect him from that threat. Maybe he was tired of losing human friends, soldiers; I don’t know.”

“He sent _metal_ to protect himself?” Derek asks, he knows his disbelief is written all over his face. He doesn’t think he could follow someone that trusted metal to protect him.

“He’d reprogrammed it, gave it specific mission parameters that it had to follow, the other Terminator was destroyed, we destroyed the one that John sent back. We thought we’d destroyed Skynet… but apparently we just delayed things for a while.”

If the metal playing at being Weaver could be believed Sarah took a right turn when she should have taken a left and snapped reality into a different stream. The metal remembers both; it had apparently been in the time loop already when reality had shifted.

So instead of John Connor leading the resistance, Sarah Connor took that role in her sons place and John Connor instead became Jonathan Weaver. Adopted son of a then human Catherine Weaver and her husband. Eventually brother to Savannah Weaver.

Jonathan and Savannah Weaver are apparently the ones that Sarah is getting her information from in the future.

Sarah hadn’t known that, Derek is trying not to think that a kid that is blood to him is apparently still living with metal in the future and using that arrangement to feed them information.

  


**********************************************************

  
They’re let out of the room a few hours later, Weaver watches them get loaded in a van, they’re still in only their pants and shirts. No shoes. No weapons.

When the van is getting ready to pull away he sees a car pull up. John and Savannah come out of the backseat. John has pulled the girl onto his shoulders, she’s laughing and he’s smiling and Weaver seemingly knows that they’re watching because she pulls John (and by virtue of her being on John’s shoulders, Savannah) into a hug.

They walk into the house and the van pulls away as the door closes.

“I’m going to kill her,” Sarah says softly. “If it’s the last thing that I do.”

Derek looks over at his brother and Kyle is staring out the window, staring at a closed door to a house where his son is living with their worst enemy.

He thinks that Sarah can kill Weaver if she’s able. Derek is more concerned with getting the boy that is blood to them out of the house before he becomes a liability to the metal bitch that’s raising him and she kills him.

Kyle looks over at him and Derek knows that his brother is thinking the same thing.


End file.
